World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

The US is planning to build an air base for drones in northwest Africa–most likely Niger.  The base is designed to aid efforts to contain the extremists who have threatened the government in Mali and to support the French intervention there.  Such a base would require the stationing of US troops, so it signals the beginning of a US ground commitment in yet a new venue of world politics.

There is a long standing campaign against the Hazara minority in Pakistan.  The campaign has received very little media attention but the persecution certainly qualifies as a genocide.  The Hazara is a Shia Muslim sect in the overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim Pakistan.  The lack of attention by the rest of the world is largely explained by the geopolitical concerns about Pakistan itself which make the domestic issue seem less important.

There are reports of a worrisome escalation of violence in the Syrian civil war.  The Israelis have apparently attacked a convoy of weapons moving from Syria into Lebanon.  The Israelis have publicly worried about the transfer of chemical and other advanced technology weapons from Syria into the hands of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and have apparently decided that a strike on Lebanese territory would be less explosive than an attack on Syrian soil.  We’ll watch to see what the Iranian response to this attack might be.